20 years, or 112 years?

Consider just how far the UK's place in the world fell between 1911 (George V ascended to the throne of the global superpower; his Royal Navy was launching 2 to 4 new capital ships per year) and 1948 (3 years after "winning" WWII - and basics such as food, clothing, and gasoline were still strictly rationed).

USSR was also terribly battered by WWII, and its leadership was not highly competent either; I'd say both parameters were much worse than UK's. But it managed to remain a large empire with a high economic potential, and UK could not.

The USSR moved all its industry eastward, as the German army advanced, waiting for the very last moment to do so. Quite an incredible feat that allowed them to beat Germany at industrial efficiency and secure victory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuation_in_the_Soviet_Union

Here's an analysis of the mechanisms underpinning this kind of achievement according to a Russian mathematician:

>One of the fathers of synergetics, G. Haken, in his article [9], recalls the following story from the Ancient Testament: “It was the custom in a certain community for the guests to bring their own wine to weddings, and all the wines were mixed before drinking. Then one guest thought that if all the other guests would bring wine, he would not notice when drinking if he brought water instead. Then the other guests did the same, and as the result they all drank water.”

>In this example, two situations are possible. In the first, everyone contributes his share, giving his equal part, and everyone will equally profit. In the second, each strives for the most advantageous conditions for himself. And this can lead to the kind of result mentioned in the story.

>Two different arithmetics correspond to these two situations. One arithmetic is the usual one, the one accepted in society, ensuring “equal rights,” and based on the principle “the same for everyone,” for instance in the social utopia described by Owen. In a more paradoxal form, this principle is expressed in M. Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita by Sharikov: “Grab everything and divide it up.”

>The aspiration to this arithmetic is quite natural for mankind, but if society is numerous and non-homogeneous, then it can hardly be ruled according to this principle. The ideology of complete equality and equal rights, which unites people and inspires to perform heroic deeds, can effectively work only in extremal situations and for short periods of time. During these periods such an organization of society can be very effective. An example is our own country, which, after the destructions and huge losses of World War II, rapidly became stronger than before the war.

>One of the authors personally witnessed such an atmosphere of psychological unity when he was working on the construction of the sarcophagus after the catastrophe of the Chernobyl nuclear facility. The forces of the scientists involved were so strongly polarized 2 that the output of each of them was increased tenfold as compared to that in normal times. During that period it was not unusual for us to call each other in the middle of the night.

>Nevertheless such heroism, self-denial, and altruism, when each wants to give (and not to take) as much as possible, is an extremal situation, a system that can function only for short intervals of time. Here the psychological aspect is crucial, everyone is possessed by the same idea — to save whatever may be saved at any cost. But the psychology of the masses, which was studied by the outstanding Russian emigr´e sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, is presently studied only outside of Russia.

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0806.4164

Now the question is: to which extent and in which ways does this apply to the subject we're discussing.

The real myth is that the Soviets just threw meat waves and would have lost without Uncle Sam. Most of that was anti communist propaganda and any serious (ie non-narrative driven) historian knows the truth about the industrial and military achievements of the Soviets in that war.

https://anonpaste.pw/v/6f99bf00-ab49-48fc-978a-27f656a37c02#...

Nonetheless, the production hell people working at those factories went through shouldn't be downplayed.

Documentary (2024): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjGYMFVMeYo

For such feats, factory equipment mattered. So did trucks. Studebakers were relatively cheap and probably wouldn't move the needle on your GDP-based meter, but they were very important to Soviet logistics.

Tanks & SPGs

British Empire - 47862

USA and territories - 108410

USSR - 119769

Other vehicles

British Empire - 1475521

USA and territories - 2382311

USSR - 265000

Bombers

British Empire - 38158

USA and territories - 96872

USSR - 21116

Total large ships

British Empire - 558

USA and territories - 2020

USSR - 63

“In all, $31.4 billion went to the United Kingdom, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, and the remaining $2.6 billion to other Allies.” ~12x that when counting for inflation.

As pointed out by a sibling poster Russia produced more of them than the US but not more than US + England. But the context was tanks are relatively difficult to ship, so America focused on other areas.

Czechoslovak industry in the early 1950s was producing a shitton of products sold under their real price to the Soviets, or bargained for cheap agricultural products.

By comparison, the performance of the UK in the last 20 years vs the US or the Nordics is a singular tragedy.

There is the US not-an-Empire [0] though, that'll probably count when the history books reflect on the present era. WWI/II can very easily be interpreted as a transition of power away from incompetent British leadership (indeed, European monarchies - the change pre- post- WWI is striking) towards more capable US-based leadership.

It isn't clear UK public ever really grappled how insufficient their leadership theory is. Their acceptance of poor performers over the last 20+ years has been striking although it is mirrored by low standards in the US.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_inst...

By the end of WW2 the UK was bankrupt and completely ruined economically, while the US had become the industrial powerhouse of the world thanks to abundant resources, manpower, and the fact that the war largely took place far from its borders (a few tiny islands notwithstanding). By the end of WW2 the US owned nearly all the gold that Europe previously owned which led to the US Dollar the worldwide reserve currency.

There is a lesson for people governing global empires here - don't allow major wars to blow up on your borders. Or, ideally, anywhere. Maybe spend some time promoting peace and prosperity. Train the diplomats in diplomacy.

You'll notice that the US solution at the end of WWII was completely different to the European settlement at the end of WWI. And the US approach to warring was a lot more staid than the UK's. These are basic matters of competence.

Also, there was a complex web of international treaties and alliances that eventually pulled the UK into the war.

They were first cousins, along with the German Kaiser they went to war with.

Another key factor is that the US had no empire to hold together, and, to its credit, wisely did not seek to expand its territory after WW2 in order to create one (which it could have easily done, and which the UK had done many times before).

Heat waves up to 35-38c aren't unheard of. Our houses aren't built for this so a heatwave is quite uncomfortable as houses stay 20-25c overnight

Plenty of flooding in various parts

This autumn and winter has seen a lot of storms

The south fares much better of course and without as much flooding

Unfortunately the smear tactics against Farage over the years have been quite successful especially against the older generation that relies more heavily on TV for news. UK might face another election where the right splits their vote and Labour walk in again. Many decades of decline would be compounded at that point, putting the UK into more of a second world position.

How many PMs has the UK been though in that time? _Way_ more than the average Western country. We don't accept poor oerformers more than anywhere else, we kick them out of office - but the talent pipeline is abysmal so the next one is usually awful too.

The flow of gold into the US starting in 1933 is thought to be why the Great Depression was moderating so much there and then: the money supply was inflating.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

Its a Europe wide problem.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

The EU gets a boost from the inclusion of Eastern European economies that have been fast growing from a lower base.

If you compare the US and the UK to the four biggest EU economies, the US is doing best by far, and the UK is doing better than three and worse than one:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

Better if they had let the Nazis won and ruled the UK? WTF?

https://www.quora.com/What-was-Hitlers-opinion-of-the-Britis...

Or failure to compete with startup banks...

Is number of war ships, or billionaires, a good measure for a country?

https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/food-thought-rationing-...

I have read that the Empire was a fiscal net negative. That was offset by it being a free market area with policies that favoured the UK, the benefits from that went primarily to a small minority.

Deepmind is still in the UK. And more, including foreign, bidders driving up prices for acquisitions and investments, will lead to more people making the jump.

they dont mean location, they mean ownership of the equity.

in reality, the UK isn't poorer than before. It is about the same - no growth. It is only poorer when compared to the US's growth.

One's labour, when being paid market rates, does not make one's country poorer. And those profits from said labour was paid for by the acquitition of the capital - money was invested.

So in essense, the "poorness" that the UK feels right now is not a result of these companies getting foreign ownership, but the UK gov't lack of industrial policy and investment. Brexit is the last straw probably.

That's a weird conclusion to draw.

Governments aren't generally known for their ability to pick winners ahead of time. How about instead of trying industrial policy (again), the UK could try to remove roadblocks that keep them from having successful companies?

They could also try to leave more money in the hands of taxpayers, so they can invest.

Rich foreigners are happy to invest in the UK. See eg Deepmind itself, which was bought by Google.

> [...] so our labour enriches other countries while our country gets poorer.

Foreign investment is usually seen as a good thing. Especially foreign direct investment.

And: why do you care so much what passports these rich people hold?

And i'm not saying it matters - i'm saying that the OP is lamenting that the UK is no longer owning innovative companies.

This isn't just an EU thing, for what it's worth. The US is the outlier.

You don't hear about the small capital firms investing in boring slow growing companies, because they are boring and slow growing.

For example, Ireland's state VC - Enterprise Ireland - ranked first in the world of venture capital investors by deal count in 2020 by Pitchbook. The average size of the deal compared to a Series A was laughable in context, but the ethos is there.

It's anti success. And there is garbage everywhere, people keep voting for antisocial housing and bad cultures. It's a failing state.

My hypothesis is that this is a combination of old money and class consciousness. In other words, the rich are risk averse because all they care is preserving their wealth and the working class don’t believe and can’t even imagine that more is possible.

As a member of the working class, I find there’s little incentive to build something new or innovate because the effort required to navigate through all the burdensome regulations is overwhelming. On top of that, any additional income I might generate from bringing my ideas or initiatives to market would be taxed at more than 50%. For many people like me, the effort simply isn’t worth it. Instead, we focus our energy on other pursuits, such as family, sports, or friendships.

This shift in focus isn’t inherently bad—a life balanced between family, friends, work, and leisure is often a recipe for happiness. However, societal progress relies heavily on the efforts of a small minority of individuals who are bold (or perhaps crazy) enough to pursue their ideas. When 90% of those individuals are discouraged from taking entrepreneurial risks, society’s capacity for innovation is severely stifled.

In short, it’s clear that excessive regulations and high taxes are holding Europe back from achieving its full potential for growth and innovation.

Why would you skip having 1 billion Euros just because you could have had 2 Billion but the government took the rest? Up until 1960's rich Americans payed %91 tax, and yet they kept their entrepreneurial spirit - why you can't do the same at the stated %50?

When Apple was founded, the tax rates were %70.

You can't rely on such paper figures to determine real tax burden in the past.

It makes sense to compare tax burdens of well-paid employees, a favorite cash cow of most governments. These are the people who sometimes start new businesses, and use their savings to do so.

And there is a meaningful difference to the volume of their savings if their top tax bracket is 30 per cent or 55 per cent.

BTW, rich don't actually pay much taxes. The luxury life they live is usually not taxed, most of the things they do is considered business expense.

When a worker flies to Ibiza they first pay social security and income taxes, then they pay consumption taxes like VAT.

When a businessman flies to Ibiza they deduct whatever they can as an expense so they don't pay income tax and VAT. For whatever they can't claim that it is a business expense they will pay with a cheap loan against their assets and avoid paying income taxes. Since they still have those assents, they pay just the interest later when the assents increase in value. If their business fails those assets fail, the bank takes the assets and no taxation happens.

Once you're at more than 1 million per year there are other challenges and you can probably afford to hire someone to take part of that burden off your shoulders, but until you get to that point you're on your own and it's very damn stressful (and by stressful I mean that that includes the possible inflated but all to real fear of getting to prison because of that tax-thingie that you didn't fill the 100% correct way or because some work your company did broke some municipal regulations or whatever and now you're on the hook for damages and, yes, personal liability).

Actually your VAT-skimming thing at the end is a very good example of that mentality, i.e. the innovators here having to have the Tax man front and center in their minds, before innovation and trying to build something useful off the ground, because if you don't know how to play the Tax man (at the limit of legality, as your example is) then you're toast. That "playing the Tax-man" thing consumes a lot of people's energy in the early stages, energy that would have been way better spent trying to actually make something new and innovative.

[the 50k and 1 million figures are just used as examples, maybe it's not 50k but 70k or 80k and maybe it's not 1 million but 5 to 10 million, but the idea stays the same]

For example a company like Uber could have never taken off here in Europe because the tax authorities (and not only) would have never let that happened, i.e. Uber (the company) playing the "they're not real employees" game with the authorities. Yes, Uber eventually made it into Europe, but only because by that time it already was a big and established company in the States so it had lots of money to spend on lobby activities.

My take would be that once people have 100k€ in net annual income per person, they just do other things and work less because it brings them more happiness than the additional money would.

https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/03/10/infographic_marginal_rat...

No one's making that choice. Most businesses fail, even in somewhere entrepreneur-friendly like America. Why not just work for someone else, given the rewards are capped even at relatively low level of success? Why take the risk, when taxation has failed to price risk into reward?

Nobody is talking about the difference between 1 and 2 billion, they are talking about the difference between 50 and 100 thousand, while competing.

It's not so much any single regulation, as it is there's so many little ones that seem reasonable on the face of it. But it's also that what makes the ruling Canadian class so is the authority to bypass those regulations.

I can give one personal example; I was able to secure some public funding application for a non profit I'm affiliated with. But the only reason I was able to do that was because my parents were university classmates of the elected official that was able to pressure the staff that was handling the paperwork to prioritize and approve our application ahead of probably the hundreds in front of us. The official's going to get a nice thank you dinner out of it, but I also had to offer some information that the official could financially benefit from for him to even consider it, and a promise of some future favors.

For better or worst that's how a lot of Canadian system works. Grant applications, personal tax work, personal and business banking, etc. Anyone can get through it eventually for anything. But if you want it done quickly and in a way probably won't get tied up in the system itself, you better know someone that owes you a favor.

As it turns out, he also complained about excessive documentation he needs to get public funds for his project.

So both of you are actually complaining about accessing public funds and not actually doing private investment or starting a private company with private funds.

this is not what most of the Americans do and this is not what they mean by startups or business. Mostly.

If someone's businesses is already working, then why would they go and get investment money?

It seems like the investors don't realize that if someone does have that much net profit, they actually don't have that much leverage over them to get good equity deals. So they are essentially just paying high and selling low later.

Life changing money is going from $50k/year to $1m/year. Not from $1b to $2b.

The vast majority of tax burden and complexity hits the middle class.

> When Apple was founded, the tax rates were %70.

It was 35% on capital gains.

And no, millionaire or billionaire doesn't matter much. Europe lacks Billionaires not Millionaires. Europe is full of small businesses and by small I mean millions in profits and revenues.

In Europe %99 of the companies are small or medium sized enterprises, which is not different than the USA. In USA however, large companies have slightly higher number of employees which is an indicative of concentration of power and that's how you get your "USA has 5 unicorns in top 10 but EU has only 1" lists.

Contrary to the narrative, Europe has much more small and medium sized enterprises per capita: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Micr...

It lacks both.

The US has 8.5% millionaires. Germany has 4.1. France has 5.6. Norway has 5.9. The UK has 5.8. Once you include the rest of the EU it goes even lower.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...

edit: And in the US there's no need to start a business to be a millionaire. You can become one by just working a regular job. Sales, consulting, tech, finance, etc. jobs can even pay you $1m per year.

You made it a point, not me. If you're going to try changing the goal post when proven wrong then there's no point in talking further.

That assumption appears to hold in general (Luxembourg and Switzerland have higher GDP and significantly higher millionaire percentages than the US), but there are a LOT of exceptions, like Ireland/Norway (way less millionaires than you would expect from GDP).

This is very interesting, I would not have expected to see such significant differences between countries...

I find it ironic you mention "classes" (regarding "as a member of the working class"). There are problems everywhere (either as an employee or as an entrepreneur). Feeling overwhelmed is just a feeling, does not say anything about how much you can do or if you get a reasonable workload.

I think what is holding Europe back is the people not trying and understanding various things without having lots of fears (of being overwhelmed, of large tax, of what people will say, etc.).

A balance must be stricken also between what you can do (leisure, family) and how many resource you produce/consume. The purpose should be for more of leisure/family but that is ONLY IF we (I am also European) produce/consume enough. Too many smart and capable people want to "just be an employee", which results in gaps in other places (entrepreneurs, politicians, etc.).

https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-business/start...

Annoyingly, in 20 years of working I've never been fired or laid off.

If you're already unemployed, it's possible to keep your allowance longer for a business start-up or takeover.

It's also possible to sign a “rupture conventionée”, which entitles you to unemployment benefits.

But no, if the employee resigns, he or she is not entitled to unemployment benefits, nor to business start-up assistance.

the French system is generous, but not as generous.

First, there are some "protected classes" of resigning that allow you to be eligible for unemployment right after you resign, for example: moving to follow your spouse, resigning less than 3 months after having been laid off, going back to study or... creating a company!![1] :).

Second, you are entitled to unemployment benefits even if you resign without "a good reason". The issue is that you can only request your benefits 4 months after having resigned. This leads to many people believing that you just do not get anything if you resign; because who wants to eat the 4 months of no income?

This 4 months waiting period is not advertised at all, and my complotist self believes it might be on purpose; if you don't know about it and don't request it, that's less money for the government to spend :^).

[1] Conditions apply (having worked uninterrupted for the last 5 years)

[0] https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F34991/...

It's not only CAC40, it's part of some collective bargaining agreements which apply to whole sectors (e.g. SYNTEC which applies to all consulting and most IT companies).

So, 30k EUR (gross) with a maximum funding period of one year? Laughable. Also probably a little bit tragicomic.

Early seed rounds are usually measured in couple of USD millions. I wonder how these brilliant minds in the EU think they will attract the industry talent to leave their ~5x salary (outside FAANG) for such a pocket money.

Out of curiosity I was spot-checking the the founders of the latest YC 24 Winter batch at https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=W24 , and the requirements would exclude at least 90% of them from EXIST if they lived in Germany.

This is really ridiculously and needs to stop.

And/or don't think that more is better/desirable. I wouldn't consider myself working class, but I was definitely raised with the idea that making obscene amounts of money is actually pretty selfish/immoral and not something one ought to strive for. That doesn't preclude going into business. But it is pretty antithetical to the VC funding model and the creation of billion dollar businesses.

In general, it seems that the culture in America is that wealth is virtuous and confers status, whereas in Europe that at least isn't so universal and some circles it is even seen as shameful (consider that variants on socialism are still mainstream political ideologies in Europe).

Isn't this due to different types of Christian traditions? AFAIK In some, it is considered that the wealth is given by the God to the virtuous ones and they are merely guardians of it and responsible to use use the wealth in a virtuous ways and therefore getting rich is encouraged and the rich are treated with respect?

There's something similar among some Muslim sects too, in Muslim majority countries it is not uncommon to believe that the God chose someone to be rich and there's more to that person that the eye can see therefore must be respected. Some religious communities even get so obscenely rich and you can see poor servants having a religious experience when their leader arrives with an a luxury car.

There's also a very strongly egalitarian way of thinking, as in pretty much everybody is interchangeable. So, if someone does better than somebody else, it's likely because of something "unfair" (or luck) and not thanks to being more competent.

To be fair, that's probably true in the vast majority of cases.

But the perception I'm talking about applies even to "reasonably confortable" people. Think your random engineer making 100k a year (which is a "good" salary in these parts). Basically, someone with some form of STEM degree.

I doubt most of these people are doing anything shady. Plus, this kind of income doesn't really give them any kind of financial independence: they wouldn't be able to afford not having a job.

I guess it depends what your level of "shady" is - I know a bunch of people in that kind of range who were all about "optimising their tax" (which I would consider to be "tax evasion" - morally wrong even if it is legal at the time.)

For example: France offers specific saving deposits with guaranteed interest rate and non-taxed. If a normal saving deposit would be taxed and has similar interest rate, "optimizing their tax" means just using the that specific deposit.

There are many other schemes that I can't believe they exist (example: in France if you create an investment account, after 5 years of the account existence you are not taxed on the gains! So what you can do is "create account with 100 euro", "wait 5 years", "invest more / potentially do gains" - and you will not be taxed!!!)

You will tell me "that is morally wrong!". I could agree with you, but I see nobody demanding better laws/regulations, probably because they don't know/care about details.

No, I think the investment account with no tax on gains is fine. I'm talking about things like "create a company, take a salary that's just over the lowest tax threshold, get 0% infinite term company loans from yourself" - things that your average person wouldn't be doing (unlike the free-gains-account.)

It wasn't for a long time though. There's a bunch of other similar schemes which caught famous people[0] when they were declared illegal by UKGOV.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jun/19/tax-scheme-...

So, my opinion is that splitting people by class/income/whatever does not help a lot. You need rules/systems to avoid as much as possible cheating schemes, and compared to like 30 years ago things might already be better, but as nobody can check every news many can end with the impression "the system is bad".

But that would mostly mean changing places. If you go and work 10-15 years in an expensive/high pay city, you could retire in a less expensive city.

On the other hand if you expect that everything will be as when you were working (place, expenses, etc.), I am not sure it is the case even in the US for early retirements ...

I don't think I've ever seen this claimed anywhere except as a criticism.

By taking big risks, one might ascend to this capitalist class if they succeed.

They were exterminated and replaced by a very small European population. Like sterilising a Petri dish and letting bacteria grow, the opportunities that population experienced were the biggest any population in the world ever had. Just look at a graph of the population growth of US OR California in the last century and compare it to others.

Now there is in California a population of near 40 million people.

That is not a "mindset", this is real growth that they could experience and the rest of the world could not.

We don't worry whether my insurance will cover the next health issue that will happen to me, be it broken leg or lifelong costly treatment. I don't have to desperately try to save maybe 1.5 million $ to put my kids through decent university, if they desire to do so. I am not brutally tossed on the sidewalk when I am fired, both employer and state gives a LOT of support to not fall off the societal cliff and end up as typical US homeless person. We have way more resting time to recharge via holidays (this fellow from 1.1. is running on 90% corporate work contract and thus sporting 50 vacations days per year - now thats QOL improvement, I've already planned 6 week+ vacations for this year). We have on average simply healthier lifestyles and it shows literally massively.

I could go on for a long time. But you can ignore that - compare usage of mental health medication, from what I've seen its much more massive in US, manifesting the additional stress that US population is cca exposed to.

Its a balance - you add more money, you remove more 'humanity', and the additional stress is there and very real. Everybody has different ideal spot, and this also changes a lot during life. Isn't it better to have 2 systems next to each other, and everybody can pick how they want to live your life? Focus purely on money is stupid, their added value in life quickly diminishes once a person is not poor, then other aspects of life become much more important. The complete opposite is same, 0 progress. Something in between, as always, is the best road for most.

(Not an American.)

Where and how do you get 50 vacation days/year.

> There is an Indian savagery, a savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans strive after gold: and the breathless hurry of their work - the characteristic vice of the New World - already begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage also, spreading over it a strange loss of spirit (Geistlosigkeit). One is now ashamed of repose: even long reflection almost causes remorse of conscience. Thinking is done with a stop-watch, as dining is done with the eyes fixed on the financial newspaper; we live like men who are continually "afraid of letting opportunities slip." "Better do anything whatever, than nothing" - this principle also is a noose with which all culture and all higher taste may be strangled. And just as all form obviously disappears in this hurry of workers, so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye for the melody of movement, also disappear.

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §329

Americans feel more pain but are also rewarded, Europe has no option but to become progressive - otherwise tere will be no more Europe and the Americans and Chinese will make us adopt their ways.

Oh, BTW, America is also struggling. The latest political developments are an attempt to change course - they are trying to become a bit more like Europe with the race and class based politics holding roots. They say they are anti-regulation anti-discrimination(of whites specifically) but the core MAGA movement is all about putting barriers and preserving old ways for the benefit of a subset of people. Americans are too in soul searching. Their MAGA literally means fixing what is no longer great but their demands are actually quite conservative and they already begin falling off with their accelerations partners.

A notion of "bare progress" is the elephant in the room. Progress is a vector. It has magnitude and direction. People talk of moving "forward or back", but science also has a steering wheel.

> and the Americans and Chinese will make us adopt their ways.

This very notion of "progress" as a totalitarian force is also dangerous. The boot is on the other foot from 80 years ago. When Europe was starting a 1000 year technological master-race, more measured minds had to extinguish that fire. I see many similarities today - people seeing "progress" simply as dominance.

I liked the brain-dump in TFA, but I think it's over-complex and too tied to a contemporary interpretation of capital investment.

We've been spooging away our talent for generations here. Look at how we treated Turing. We mismanage or sell-off everything cool we invent.

What Britain still suffers from is class disloyalty. We still have a strong but invisible class system which is now international financiers. Those sorts "float above" the ordinary economy, they are disconnected from UK interests and don't give a toss about engineering, science, knowledge, education...

A lot of the measured minds were saying eugenics was a good idea. It took the horror of seeing experiments and concentration camps to make it so deeply unfashionable the idea couldn't even survive in academia.

But look at this post made here a couple of days ago [0]. It's absolutely back in fashion. I think technofascism really is a thing now - you can feel certain people getting quite giddy with thoughts of power.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42735539

Eugenics was the same. It was a Progressive way of thinking, if I remember correctly.

It long ago escaped academia. Everyone wants to imagine themselves "insanely powerful people" now. It's part of the sell.

But based on experience I'm with Chomsky, that the majority of academics are abject cowards (if we weren't we'd take back the universities)

> Eugenics was the same. It was a Progressive way of thinking.

Again I think you're right, painful as the truth is. I met many oh-so humane "Humanists" eager to stop the suffering of those poor untermensch.

I'm not sure this is true. Socialism does have a surprising foothold, but I think that's largely due to the larger number of people flowing through academia.

Current EU is definitely not a stable and well functioning system. Look at economic conditions, political outcomes, illegal immigration, wealth inequality, societal and political trust, homelessness rates, birth rates, free speech suppression, welfare austerity, etc Everything has been going downhill since the 2008 crash. It's a powder keg.

>they are trying to become a bit more like Europe with the race and class based politics holding roots.

What are you on about? Europe doesn't have much race based politics, that's a thing America keeps pushing.

Everyone knows that Europeans are much more racist than Americans, it's just that we are much less explicit about it and its issues are different than the issues in the USA.

The governments of Europe no longer hold a monopoly of violence. Terror groups and MENAPT groups have brought a diverse range of violent threats to people.

Building a robot army to solve this is one viable solution that is hardware and software based.

The efficient & practical way is to stop renewing residence and work visas, making acquisition of visas harder through complex demands of high language proficiency, and a high amount of money as proof-of-funds, perhaps requiring a local referral too. It's what countries that don't want immigrants but don't want to say it out loud do.

As a philosophy of law point, aren't laws passed to make things illegal if they aren't wanted? Rather than legal?

"it's not that I don't like them - I am not like that, its just that I don't want illegal immigration"

BTW I don't disagree with the people who don't want everyone be welcome, I just think that their solution ideas and demands are misguided. My observation is that people from various ethnicities can function in cohesion and are about the same when they are from a similar educational background and rarely have ethnical or racial issues among themselves and IMHO all the problems will be resolved if you let people naturally find their appropriate group they belong to instead of having BS like country borders and visas and DEI or race based positive discrimination etc.

The worries people have, especially in somewhere like Britain, is it's a country with a relatively small population compared to the level of immigration, and housing is an enormous problem. One outcome that I think can be to a considerable extent[0] attributed to high net immigration is that housing has become smaller (many houses divided into flats), and housing has become much more expensive. So anyone who already owned a house is sitting fairly pretty, as they get bouyed up by the housing market, but anyone looking to buy for the first time, or buy into a new market for the first time (e.g. moving to near schools for kids) is going to have a massive problem, as the competitive pressure has up-bidded housing and made it worthwhile to subdivide and sell/rent smaller dwellings.

This could be all white people doing it (somewhere like Cornwall in the UK is mostly annoyed because other Brits buy holiday homes there, driving up prices for locals and their kids who are coming up) - it doesn't matter. The housing costs are what matter. And they, a bit like fuel, drive up everything else: NHS workers need higher salaries to just be able to live in many places, which drives up taxes.

This isn't to avoid actual race/ethnicity-related tensions. But there's a giant clump of people who are just fed up with their money going far less far than their parents' and grandparents' money did when it comes to one of the fundamentals of life: housing yourself and your family. And their parents and grandparents are equally upset that their kids/grandkids have in a major sense a harder life than they did.

[0] definitely not fully; there are multiple factors. But if you net import the equivalent of the population of Liverpool each year, and you aren't building a Liverpool each your to house them, it's obvious that prices will start shooting up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation

Basically economic migrants - predominately young men from the middle east - disguising themselves as Refugees and taking social supports away from the families fleeing warzones.

In other words, this is actually welfare fraud that happens to have a travel component.

Home break-ins can be avoided by abolishing locks on your front door and leaving them open for the public. You go first please.

The question was simple, why do you support illegal immigration in a country's borders as being OK, but not crossing in the borders of your house?

It's easy to be virtuous and generous with other people's money/resources.

I think we are done here since I don't feel spending time for positions I never claimed. I despise this type of argumentation, its a known fallacy and its useless.

You can count yourself as won an arguments if you feel like that.

It's the same reason we don't seek to improve crime rates by legalising theft. Sure, there'd be fewer people labelled as "criminal", but the original problem would remain (and in all probability would become worse).

Obviously, it is the reason that matters and the reason is not benign.

People want other people to like people in certain way they and then castrate Alan Turing for illegal love. People want to have slaves then they have illegally free slaves problem.

Why pretend that this is about upholding the law?

Illegal immigration is a metric of the EUs economic success and social stability compared with North Africa, Eastern European Accession States, and the war-torn middle east. If America shared land borders and direct migration routes with Islamic caliphates and the like, they'd know all about it.

Economic Conditions and Political Outcomes are pretty sane and tolerable for all but a select group of (surprise surprise) US backed agitators like Hungary. You have to remember that the EU is run as a society rather than an economy, and must be judged on this ethos. People are very fond of using the comparable GDPs of Bavaria and Mississippi in this conversation - forgetting to mention the life expectancy is 10 years less and infant mortality 400% higher on the US side.

Societal and Political trust is still quite high - despite much fearmongering, the far-right are not gaining the political capital necessary to instigate significant change outside of Hungary.

Homelessness rates are a factor of illegal migration - and are laughably low compared to the US on a per capita basis; ditto whatever warped contention you have regarding 'welfare austerity'. We just call it social security. During Covid and in the period afterwards it was hugely ramped up across Europe - and not in a giveaway budget with a check personally signed by an Oligarch.

Re 'free speech suppression' I'm really not sure what you're aiming at. The current cultural friction regarding things like gender-identification and pronoun usage are uniquely american exports. On basically all other counts other than venue-shopping defamation cases, it's a moot point for any normal person.

Finally re birth rates - they tend to go down in wealthy and advanced societies outside of select religious groupings (looking at you Salt Lake City) so I'm not sure what your point is there.

> Economic Conditions and Political Outcomes are pretty sane and tolerable for all but a select group of (surprise surprise) US backed agitators like Hungary. You have to remember that the EU is run as a society rather than an economy, and must be judged on this ethos. People are very fond of using the comparable GDPs of Bavaria and Mississippi in this conversation - forgetting to mention the life expectancy is 10 years less and infant mortality 400% higher on the US side.

This isn't true. I know many people that have moved from Spain to Hungary. Most of these people where politically fairly normal e.g. either centre-left right or centre-left. I speak to people from all over Europe regularly and many of them do not feel the way that you are describing.

> Societal and Political trust is still quite high - despite much fearmongering, the far-right are not gaining the political capital necessary to instigate significant change outside of Hungary.

That isn't true. I know many areas of Europe where the electorate keep on voting for further right parties. The same is happening in the UK. Labour only won because the Conservatives lost and the Reform party did extremely well for what is a relatively new party. I know the same is happening in Belgium (I speak regularly with Belgian nationals). Areas of Spain that are most affected by immigration have voted for further right parties. So I know this isn't true.

> Re 'free speech suppression' I'm really not sure what you're aiming at.

Just look up the hate speech laws enacted throughout Europe and in the UK and some of the cases that have been prosecuted. We do not have a right to the free speech in the UK and the majority of Europe doesn't either.

The plural of anecdotes is not data, nor does your select social circle represent a cogent sample group.

Orbans stated position is to pivot Hungary from a democracy into an illiberal state, modeled after Putin's Russia. At the EU summit in mid-December, for example, he refused to agree to the extension of the Russia sanctions that expire at the end of January.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/02/europe/hungary-election-v...

Hungary are on the brink of being kicked out of the Schengen Zone, have about 12 billion in EU funds frozen because of their stupidity, and are now getting loans off China like some sort of tinpot African dictatorship in order to bridge funding gaps.

The next biggest right-wing rise is - surprise surprise - bordering them and the ex-Soviet Bloc in Poland. That waned so quickly with the escalation of War in Ukraine that, even if they joined forces, Konfederacja + PiS could still not form a majority coalition for seat of the Polish Government.

>>That isn't true. I know many areas of Europe where the electorate keep on voting for further right parties. The same is happening in the UK.

You missed my key qualifier 'necessary to instigate significant change'. The Overton window shifts when society is impacted by War and mass refugee immigration, particularly in a period of high-taxes following high social spend (lockdown).

>> Just look up the hate speech laws enacted throughout Europe and in the UK and some of the cases that have been prosecuted.

Citations needed.

>> We do not have a right to the free speech in the UK and the majority of Europe doesn't either.

Well no, not explicitly, as they have a different legal and basis for law as the US - e.g. they don't have a codified constitution either as they came from a common law system based on the French Courts. Instead they hold the same proportional right as a negative right to freedom of expression under the common law.

Its a moot point anyway as since 1998, freedom of expression is guaranteed according to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights across Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_10_of_the_European_Con...

Political satire is one of the oldest and grandest cultural traditions in Europe. Hell, most European countries even have some variant of a political satire show like Spitting Image:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2024.2...

https://reason.com/2019/10/03/the-e-u-orders-global-censorsh...

https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/03/german-businessman-cleared...

>>https://reason.com/2019/10/03/the-e-u-orders-global-censorsh...

Eva Glawishnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland is a defamation case. Look up venue-shopping in London for American defamation cases if you want a counterpoint. The CJEU later clarified hosting providers’ obligations to remove defamatory content

https://www.ehrc-updates.nl/commentaar/209146

>>https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/03/german-businessman-cleared...

Despite being acquitted, the Michael Much case was fairly understandable - the public prosecutor said freedom of expression had to be weighed against human dignity...(and) that propaganda does not fall under freedom of expression. No arguments here. 1A Rights aren't going to save you either, unless you call someone a 'pedo-guy'.

The reason I specifically brought up Spitting Image is that I knew you'd cite this case - with this point specifically argued in court.

"Partsch also pointed to popular TV-shows doing, he said, that did the same. If the court found against Much, it would mean a ban on creating political caricatures."

The guy had his house searched by police, a €6000 fine and had to go challenge it in court. The fact that it happened at all is the problem.

"In Hamburg, a man (59) who had called Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (54, Green Party) a “complete idiot” on “X” (formerly Twitter) went unpunished. In Wunsiedel, Bavaria, the district court has now imposed a hefty penalty on someone who called Habeck an “idiot.”

"P. feels he has been treated unfairly and claims: "My Facebook post was meant to be satirical." His role model: the ZDF satire magazine "heute-show" . It regularly awards the "Golden Idiot" prize, for example to Winfried Kretschmann (75, Green Party), Sigmar Gabriel (64, SPD) or Björn Höcke (51, AfD)."

https://www.bild.de/news/2024/hamburg-regional-politik-und-w...

When something isn't easily quantifiable there is no data. OK sure then, but there wouldn't be anyway.

The fact is that people are talking about moving either out of Western Europe / UK to somewhere else and it is a common sentiment amongst many professionals.

> Orbans stated position is to pivot Hungary from a democracy into an illiberal state, modeled after Putin's Russia. At the EU summit in mid-December, for example, he refused to agree to the extension of the Russia sanctions that expire at the end of January.

Can you point me to a translated policy document or a more credible news source from like Hungary that I can translate? I don't take American news sources seriously for European issues as they frequently get basic things incorrect.

> Citations needed.

You can look up the laws yourself and the cases. They can easily be found. They are numerous. The law around speech is quite easy to find on the .gov websites.

> Well no, not explicitly, as they have a different legal and basis for law as the US - e.g. they don't have a codified constitution either as they came from a common law system based on the French Courts. Instead they hold the same proportional right as a negative right to freedom of expression under the common law.

In the UK we literally don't have the right to free speech. I have actually read the law on this issue several years ago. Only in Parliament are you allowed to speak freely. There is nowhere where it says we have these rights, there are no cases that have decided that has ruled we have these rights. This is neither explicitly or implicitly.

> Its a moot point anyway as since 1998, freedom of expression is guaranteed according to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights across Europe.

Freedom of expression != Free speech. They are not the same thing and that is why hate speech laws exist in the majority of EU countries and in the UK. Time and time again people erroneously equate free-speech with free-expression. The UK government have themselves come out and said something to the effect of "You have the right to free expression, but not saying things we don't like" essentially.

You either are being wilfully ignorant or you are horrendously naive. Go and read the law yourself if you don't believe me.

2022 and 2023 were the highest years on record for net migration into the UK. The only reason 2024 wasn't even higher was due to the new Conservative government's policy stopping international students from bringing dependents to the UK.

https://news.sky.com/story/net-migration-to-the-uk-falls-by-...

Migration to Ireland is at the highest level since 2007. It represents a 3.5 per cent increase in population - which in a given year would be one of the highest ever recorded for a single country.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2024/06/10...

>>Can you point me to a translated policy document or a more credible news source from like Hungary that I can translate? I don't take American news sources seriously for European issues as they frequently get basic things incorrect.

Wildly bad faith wasting of my time as it's one of the most famous speeches made in a Western Democracy in the 21st Century, but since I have to lead a horse to water... here's a translated transcript from the website of the HUNGARIAN GOVERNMENT.

https://2015-2019.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime...

>>You can look up the laws yourself and the cases. They can easily be found. They are numerous. The law around speech is quite easy to find on the .gov websites.

But of course the rules are different for your opponent in debate. Laughable.

>> In the UK we literally don't have the right to free speech...Freedom of expression != Free speech. They are not the same thing and that is why hate speech laws exist in the majority of EU countries and in the UK

I think you're conflating two issues here - Hate Speech and 'Freedom' of Speech.

Hate speech receives substantial protection under the First Amendment and is specifically covered under 1A as per Matal v. Tam (2017). But there are several carve-outs. The most famous is the fighting words doctrine; a well known limitation to freedom of speech under 1A - enshrined in a 9-0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942).

More to the point, the First Amendment prohibits defamation actions based on “loose, figurative language that no reasonable person would believe presented facts". Not actions like when Donald Trump defamed E Jean Carroll by denying her allegation of sexual assault to the tune of $80m+ in damages.

That said, this didn't stop ABC News paying $15m (£12m) to US President-elect Donald Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit after its star anchor falsely said he had been found "liable for rape" as opposed to liable for "sexual abuse", which has a specific definition under New York law. This is despite the substantial-truth doctrine which many jurisdictions adopted, which protects a defamation defendant as long as the “gist” of the story is true.

Something something willfully ignorant. /s

These aren't the same people as the people wanting to migrate away. I am talking about people that were born in their home countries wanting too leave. You are quite well aware of this you are being disingenuous.

Also there is 400,000 going out of the country last time I checked (and that was a good few years ago). Why are those people leaving?

> Migration to Ireland is at the highest level since 2007. It represents a 3.5 per cent increase in population - which in a given year would be one of the highest ever recorded for a single country.

Again this the same thing.

> Wildly bad faith wasting of my time as it's one of the most famous speeches made in a Western Democracy in the 21st Century, but since I have to lead a horse to water... here's a translated transcript from the website of the HUNGARIAN GOVERNMENT.

I don't follow Hungarian politics. I also don't trust American news sources. Thank you for the link though.

> But of course the rules are different for your opponent in debate. Laughable.

While they numerous and frequently get buried on major search engines. It been an issue for years now in the UK.

Most notable examples are on wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United...

There are literally countless cases now. Last time I checked there were 7 cases a day prosecuted and that was way back in 2018.

> I think you're conflating two issues here - Hate Speech and 'Freedom' of Speech.

Hate speech is a made up term to limit freedom of speech.

I am put in the unenviable position of defending people that I dislike because I think people should have the right to speak their mind.

> The most famous is the fighting words doctrine; a well known limitation to freedom of speech under 1A - enshrined in a 9-0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942).

Firstly I am talking about the UK not the US. So why you are talking about the 1A in the US is beyond me.

Also I know Fighting words is not anything like the hate speech laws in the UK. So this is irrelevant.

> More to the point, the First Amendment prohibits defamation actions based on “loose, figurative language that no reasonable person would believe presented facts".

You are now conflating defamation with hate speech. These are not the same thing. Again this isn't irrelevant.

> Something something wilfully ignorant.

Yes you are being wilfully ignorant about UK hate speech laws. There are loads of cases in the UK where people have been prosecuted for Hate Speech, There is also non crime hate incidents which can show up on background checks when you go for a job.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-crime_hate_incident

You can change mindsets with regulations that reward taking risks in new businesses/innovations, and punish rent seeking and sitting on inherited real estate for example.

But as long as EUrope is focused on maintaining the status quo of boomers and gentrified billionaires that you probably played against in Assassins' Creed, nothing will change.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"At present the CAA do not allow for these types of flights as there has to be some degree of collision avoidance in that the aircraft must be kept in visual line of sight at all times to avoid a collision.

The CAA does not regulate the use of drones indoors and there is a short section on indoor use at the following web page, about ½ way down the page.

https://www.caa.co.uk/Consumers/Unmanned-aircraft/Recreation..."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As if a search and rescue, or crop monitoring drone would be useful inside a building, complete madness.

I'm from EU and would be totally open to move to UK if there was an opportunity to make more there while working on something cool. But there simply isn't?

Then there are US startups where I could likely make 2 or 3x what I make in EU or UK.

So why would talent every consider moving to the UK to build a startup in 2025 anyway?

A lot of people choose to start businesses near their friends or families.

Doing soldering of prototypes? Good luck finding a landlord that would let you do it. The moment they hear "fumes" is a nope, fire hazard, safety risk and won't let you...

Not sure if it's true so let's look at some stats: Germany median for software engineer: €66,000 United kingdom median: €58,000

Note depending on source, these numbers both vary broadly within the same range, but with Germany salaries being about 10-15% higher on most sources, so nowhere near the figure claimed.

33% less equates to them earning roughly 50% more. The difference between 10-15% and 50% is huge!

(trivial example, if someone is earning £100,000, then someone earning 33% less makes £66,666. But Someone earning £100,000 makes 50% more than someone making £66,666)

I’m curious, if you think the issue is cultural.

Not to mention the whole idea that trying to be successful is "notions" and should be sneered at.

Edit: To compare -

Me: "I want to build a house"

Irish friends: "That's a bad idea, you'll never make it work, you'll go bankrupt and it will kill you..."

California/Oregon friends: "Fuck yeah I'll bring a nailgun"

And the problem runs in families. This is not therapy but every time I talked to my parents about an idea it would be dammed with faint praise or I'd be told I'm wasting my time. It's taken 20 years to work out that the more they dissed an idea is the better it actually was.

There is an element of truth to that, self build projects seem to go about was well as the typical software project.

Insurance: “Okay sir, who did the electrical wiring? you: “Me”. Insurance: “Are you a professional? you: “No" Insurance: “Have you had your work certified by a third party?" you: “Do my buddies count?” insurance: "Have a good day sir"

There may never be a problem and you may have figured out everything that's required to get your butt covered (good for you in this case), but the fact is that a lot of people don't know about these things, do their own thing and get royally screwed if there's a problem and, God forbid, someone gets hurt.

Without sovereign protection you just can not compete with that, ever. It's really that simple.

Simply look at China they may export loads of goods but it's predominantly priced in USD, and what do they do with all that excise USD, the only thing they can do, buy US debt. It's truly perverse.

Or look at every UK company that was bought up with those very same magic dollars.

I could quite happily get on fine at one of those big American style startups but I don't get excited about hype, I don't have the work culture it demands and I don't have a price on my soul. I'd rather earn a lot less, have extreme stability, have better family time and balance. On top of that there's something tasteless and unethical about a lot of the big startups. Do they really bring good things to society? Do I really want to be part of that?

If I can walk away with half the money, live a modest life and stand with my principles intact, I will take that over twice the money.

I don't think this is political at all. It's not a race either and we have no innate responsibility to build things like this.

Anyone young should go make as much money as possible, as early as possible, so they can have the same outlook you do in later life.

For example, right now there is not a single VC in Canada who does large pre seed / seed investments based on an idea and the founding team.

In the US you can get a 1 million cheque within a week.

That is the real reason Canada is failing on a macro scale.

@dang hopefully I have kept this well balanced.

Europe wasn’t like for centuries. What is the cause of this mindset?

I think the answer is something the left won't like - we (Europe) are killing ourselves with bureaucracy, often environmental bureaucracy. A road to hell paved with good intentions.

The documentation to the Lower Thames Crossing, a planned highway tunnel, already exceeds 360 000 pages. This is just crazy.

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/lower-thames-crossin...

But on the bureaucracy: I don’t think that’s the real cause it’s rather a symptome.

The cause must be something related to expected rewards and opportunity costs.

It is a generic handwavey excuse for losers who never tried.

I remember reading a German enterpreneur's complaint that he was unable to build an extra electric connection between his two industrial buildings in Germany in less than a year, due to endless rounds of permiting for that single cable.

He contrasted the situation to Poland, where his application on a similar site was processed in two weeks and it took two more weeks to actually build the connection.

If you think complaints of bureacracy have no merit, maybe you never faced any. It now takes about 10 years to get all permits for a regular block of flats in Prague, Czechia. It used to be 3 years or so back in 2000, and it takes only about 9 months in Denmark.

These are experienced developers, and they are still stuck.

The US also has plenty of bureaucracy, and what's worse, a lot of it stems from Common Law and capricious courts that interpret it, which is partly why large civil engineering projects like upgrading the NYC subway cost 4x more than the equivalents in Western Europe (minus the UK) or Japan.

I think the biggest factor is the sheer size of the unified US market and its economies of scale, and a second one the fact the US Social Security is limited compared to European retirement systems, and thus people have to save in their pension funds, freeing up a huge amount of capital for investment, while at the same time creating enough competition that they don't have the sense of entitlement that British feudals or continental bankers have, leaving entrepreneurs with crumbs.

Source: I'm from France but I moved to San Francisco to found my two startups, because I'm not a glutton for punishment. Then again I moved to the UK (for family reasons), so I guess I am a masochist after all.

In the European single market, you still don't have, for example, an affordable parcel service. For a Czech e-shop to send a package to France, as I did a few days ago, is something around 12 eur postage fee. It would be 4 eur within Czechia.

American e-shops can send packages from Florida to Alaska for peanuts, and they don't have to bother with translations into 20 languages.

Similarly, why work yourself to the bone for a miniscule chance of success, if you can... just chill instead? I used to be a highly-motivated go-getter, but then I realized, this shit ain't bringing happiness, and I turned into a work-avoider who spends time in the office mostly talking to coworkers and playing games in the toilet. My overall life satisfaction skyrocketed.

Yes, the society at large does need people to do the needful, but this ain't gonna be me.

How come we don’t do it?

i have some ideas but my insight to europe is limited so I'm at least half wrong.

Yes we have many comments on HN talking about how harmful the US VCs attitude is because they force good businesses into choosing between being unicorns and not getting funding.

I do not know the truth of it, but clearly its not obvious.

> Unfortunately the UK has not been well governed for 20 years or so, and hence economic outcomes as a whole have been abysmal.

I commented on this earlier. The UK's economic outcomes have been similar to comparable European economies (like Germany) and better than some (like France). Whatever the problem is, its not unique to the UK: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42766107

I do not think the UK is well run, but I think the west in general is badly run. Poorly thought out regulation, short termism in both politics and business, a focus on metrics subject to Goodhart's and Campbell's laws, and a poor understanding of the rest of the work (leading to bad foreign policy).

Who says those countries were well governed though? IMO they are all run by idealogical morons

But that can only work for so long and is beneficial in the medium to long-term for a very limited number of people (basically the owners of said financial capital), at some point you have to produce some real wealth, wealth produced from real stuff via resources of the Earth + human ingenuity and, yes, + human work.

> that includes part of their beloved NHS

A more severe problem is that the NHS was debt funded (mostly through off balance sheet debt) in the 2000s. The government kept their promise not to increase national debt by disguising running up disguised debt in the NHS

Its also worth noting that a large chuck of NHS services, GP services in particular, were always subcontracted to private providers.

But at the end of the day the point remains that if you want to have a world-beating economy you need to have access to relatively cheap inputs (which includes energy), in large enough amounts, otherwise your economy will just not make it. The Americans have that (people forget how much of an economic boom gas fracking brought with it), the Chinese have that (thanks to its very large population and access to natural resources that is reasonable enough, they're no 1930s Japan), India has that (thanks to its very large and young population), even Russia has that (thanks to its natural resources), meanwhile Europe has almost no demographic advantage and almost no natural resources left to exploit. "Innovation" (which is also lacking) and financialization alone can get you only so far.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7afrique

The real problem is a completely botched "energy transition", which deprecated very important energy sectors, which were still absolutely needed.

To be clear, I am in favor of renewables. One benefit is that they create independence from the whims of the US and Russia. Nevertheless the transition has been completely botched, driving up energy costs and making certain industries essentially non-viable.

The government focused on two things, increasing renewable peak production and deprecating nuclear. What they completely neglected is how to actually have a sustainable grid, which can cheaply deliver energy even with little sunshine and little wind. What was needed was easily regulated power (e.g. nuclear) and sufficient storage. Nuclear was completely abandoned and most government incentives were focused on increasing peak production, neglecting the storage of energy.

This is obviously harmful to the German industry, which is electricity heavy. This problem has also been consistently ignored and actively made worse in recent years, by continuing to shut down nuclear plants, even if it was clear that more energy production was needed.

In the long term, the level of wealth transfer in these countries is not sustainable, and each year it incentivizes those who produce to seek greener pastures where they get more rewards.

Look at these population histograms:

https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2024/

https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2024/

https://www.populationpyramid.net/france/2024/

https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2024/

https://www.populationpyramid.net/spain/2024/

I made some comments elsewhere about the long term. It is delusional to think that it is possible to continually have jobs that pay significantly more than identical jobs elsewhere in the world.

Germany's progressive tax system also directly incentivizes working fewer hours, as the more you work the smaller your hourly wage becomes.

HN has a very wide range of economic opinions, and some people are extremely uninformed about what it takes to do hard things that can't be grown organically, and what it takes to maintain a business running when it's done the hard thing in the face of competition.

It is fairly clear what was the best option.

(this includes property as an export industry! Leaving increasing areas of the UK owned by overseas absentee landlords.)

You will have to decide for yourself if I'm speaking from experience or have motivated reasoning, as I'm saying this as an overseas absentee landlord who bought a UK apartment around the tail end of the previous price crash, initially as a place to live in until I decided the UK wasn't for me any more, and was rich enough to do so without a mortgage.

(I left the UK in 2018 due to a mix of Brexit and technological incompetence in the form of the Investigatory Powers Act. Would have left UK sooner but for parent with Alzheimer's).

Reason being: the income from housing doesn't have to come from reselling houses (which a price crash would impact) — I'm collecting rent, not flipping property. Forecasts future increases to rental rates suggests it won't keep getting worse (relative to general inflation) than it already is for renters, but it's already obviously quite bad.

Just before the actual cut-off date for customs controls, I had the stuff that had been in storage (loft of family house) shipped over.

What is needed is a steady decrease in demand or an increase in supply.

The cost of living crisis is directly caused by the huge bureaucracy needed to build new housing. And speculators are benefiting from that. As long as governments are unwilling to let go of regulations housing costs will only increase.

Every single person who currently is looking to rent or buy a house has appetite for increasing market supply.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06...

but still has worse growth than the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_government_aust...

What they didn't do, unlike PIGS, was also tough reforms which are paying back now

https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/flying-piigs-nations-s...

See here for international comparison of government spending as % of GDP (the second figure showing trends over time), UK is not an outlier:

https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/GBR/CZE/...

The conservatives ran austerity-based policies for the last 14 years. Is your argument that they did not have a choice?

Most of those are people complaining about a business having to make changes because it took $50+m in funding and now needs to justify it. The business was only "good" because it got $50m and didn't need to do things like charge enough money. If it hadn't gotten that $50m then those people wouldn't consider it such a good business or even know about it.

If UK startups paid equity to their devs, I would work a lot harder when I've worked at them, but startups require working hard and long hours and if I've got no skin in the game, what incetive do I have to make sure the company is successful.

In basically every UK startup I've worked at they've done 1 or all of the below:

1. Offered options in numbers with no valuation/percentage of ownership. "We offer you 40000 stock options!". When asked to clarify numbers, they delay and never tell you. Inevitably they have a value of a few pence each

2. Withdraw options unilaterally when you leave the company with no option to exercise

3. Never get round to filling in the paperwork so you never actually receive them

I was _shocked_ when i worked for my first US startup and they just...gave me the options. And I could exercise them whenever I wanted. And they expired 10 years after I left the company

You're focusing on one success story out of thousands.

90%, or more, of US startups only exist to be sold to the highest bidder or to coast indefinitely long in infinite investor money, and never turn a profit.

There's still expectation in Europe at large that your company should have an actual business plan and a path to profitability.

I hear they fixed it eventually but seems like an unnecessary loss.

There are definitely political - and ultimately, military-industrial - reasons for this. The UK is deeply, deeply embedded in the Anglo-centric 5-eyes criminal superstructure, and plays a huge part in the subversion of human rights at immense scale around the world, that this criminal entity commits every second of the day.

The spook factor bleeds into every technological advancement which occurs in the UK, from GCHQ outwards, like a kraken with deep, deep tentacles.

I've worked with multiple UK-based startups which, as soon as they start to gain traction in international waters/markets, immediately becomes the target for GCHQ embedding/plants. This kills the startup.

Until the British people start prosecuting their war criminals and seeks justice for the immense human rights abuses that occur, every millisecond of every day, as a result of their out of control military-industrial oppression apparatus, there is simply no hope for UK technological industry.

The world sees this, even if the people of the UK do not - and routes around it, accordingly.

Nobody really wants to work with UK-based technology groups, knowing that they are liable for immediate corruption the moment their technology becomes relevant to, say, the people of Brazil, or Africa, or China.

I'd be interested to hear more about this.

And yet, the UK hires were often better off after all expenses than the US hires.

Largely due to housing being slightly cheaper (other posters have pointed out, London is on par with SF / NY - the big difference being London expands, NYC and SF are both "islands" - yes SF is a peninsula, but commuting up 280 or 101 is not a pleasant experienced).

Also, even offering private healthcare (BUPA) - the UK hires were cheaper. I'm in my late 30s and reasonably healthy - my all-in, gold-plated UK policy was GBP 2k / year - I was at $2,000 / month in the US.

*However* - salaries in the UK are unsustainably low.

Three reasons: [1] BOMAD - The Bank of Mom and Dad (parents paying / lending the deposit for a house so the mortgage is at a low rate) is effectively exhausted. This means that current entrants into the housing market are either renting (which is nearly as expensive as NYC, especially after the inflationary / interest rate jump), or saving to "buy" a house (I enclose in quotes because at a 95% mortgage you don't own much of your house). [2] Professional salaries outside of finance are way too low. My fiancee works in a highly skilled, professional field and her salary in 2024 was, in nominal terms the same as my starting salary in NYC 17 years ago working for a large investment bank IN THE BACK OFFICE - where salaries were decidedly blue-collar. My unproven hypothesis is that the UK professional world is still largely geared towards those with alternative assets, private incomes (especially high-prestige non-professional jobs, especially around politics). This makes it impossible to compete with US venture backed startups, even post-ZIRP, because the offer is always going to be better. And yet that private-income driven base has largely been eroded through capital gains, inheritance tax and general downward social mobility (or, perhaps, less doom-and-gloom - averaging towards the center. The difference in wealth and income between the upper-middle class and the lower-middle class has narrowed significantly). [3] There has been over the last 5-7 years significant negative messaging and tax policy against economic success. A confiscatory top-tax band, an erosion of a "job perks" friendly tax regime and a political climate that is very anti-success, even prior to the labour govt (largely started at the same time, though perhaps not by, Theresa May's 2015 speech and focus on "Just about managing").

VC in the UK is hard, largely because the majority (though by no means all) VCs are focused on aping mid-market pension managers. Their ambition is limited to businesses that already work (and yet anything transformative by definition does not work yet) - and are interested mostly in post-revenue companies with linear or lightly superlinear growth.

This, IMNSHO, is largely caused by the fact that, given state expenditure and the corp and personal tax burden, there simply isn't enough capital for US style VC - the portfolio approach requires capital to absorb failures. Most VCs here cannot afford failure.

The closest we get is the EIS / SEIS tax policy, which allows the offsetting of losses in failed businesses (by the equivalent of Accredited Investors) - as well as a friendly Cap Gains treatment of successes. But these are largely made as common stock investments by individuals - and limited to a very small scale.

Which brings me to my final point - the SAFE note is not only not ubiquitous here, it's rare. Even pre-seed investments are either common stock or (more rarely) convertible notes. This requires a level of diligence (even on small tickets) that make capital formation incredibly burdensome.

There's absolutely a path to resolving this - but the UK first has to make a political and cultural decision to embrace startup-led GDP growth, which is has not yet made.

US vs UK investors are night and day. UK investors only want to see profitability to protect their cautious capital

I'm also not sure what the government can do. SEIS/EIS is a great scheme, but the SEIS limit of £250k feels almost too small to do anything meaningful, and EIS funds are generally later stage or re-investment from SEIS.

Not only is the bureaucracy difficult, the labor laws make it very difficult to hire and compensate talent.

Germany wants innovation to be done by large corporations, not by start ups.

US founders not from wealthy backgrounds can often get $500k from friends and family. I doubt those in the UK can do so.

There's massive massive social costs due to this in the US so be careful what you wish for.

0: If a few hurdles are jumped through, then an investor who gives you £250k can get £125k relief on their income tax (not what they'd have paid on £125k, literally the whole £125k), and then claim a further 50% back of the remainder from the government if you go bust.

It can be argued that a responsibility falls on EU equity companies, pension funds, and so on, but they do not make seed investments.

I once did a pitch contest and they required we put together a business plan with financials. You want me to...what? Who on earth can read a pro forma for a pre-revenue SaaS business and say "ah yes this is worth of investment because this pro forma looks great".

London is all about banking and it shows.